Wednesday, October 27, 2010

For those of you who don't know it already, something to think about before you walk into that booth to cast your vote on Tuesday Nov. 2: Your taxes are going up and you can find out how much right here.

Just for fun, let's check the chart together. Single and earning $40,000? Get ready to pay another $160 a month. Married with the same income? $140 a month extra. Maybe you earn a little more. Twice as much? Well, congratulations, buddy. You're rich and you surely should be able to afford that roughly $450 extra a month out of your check if you're married. But if you earn $80,000 a year and get divorced, your hit is about $160 a month LESS at that income. Why? Because at $80,000 a year (most of you will agree that this is hardly "rich") you're rich enough to get dinged by the vanishing correction that eliminated the marriage penalty. Yes that evil George Bush's tax cuts not only lowered income taxes for everyone, they eliminated a little quirk in the tax code that charged married couples a higher tax rate than single people above a certain income level. Another thing to keep in mind: If you're married, we're only talking about one of the incomes in a two-earner family. If your spouse earns roughly the same as you do a year, double your tax increase. Even if he or she earns less than you, they'll be taking a hit just like you will.

Multiple studies have shown that 70% of Middle Class households essentially live paycheck to paycheck, largely because of the horrendous tax burden they already bear. And middle class households make up the vast majority of American households. (Average per capita income $46,400 a year). Only you know your family's income and financial picture, but take a look at the chart and consider this. What do you provide for your family for $170 a month or $200 a month or $450 a month that you will have to do without in order to pay your new higher tax bill brought to you courtesy of Barack Obama, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and the rest of the Democrats.

If you love your liberty and your income, pass this on. If you don't need that extra $160, $180 or $450 a month, go ahead and vote Democrat. They'll love to spend that extra cash you don't need.
Read more!

There were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq after all.
The massive cache of almost 400,000 Iraq war documents released by the WikiLeaks Web site revealed that small amounts of chemical weapons were found in Iraq and continued to surface for years after the 2003 US invasion, Wired magazine reported.
The documents showed that US troops continued to find chemical weapons and labs for years after the invasion, including remnants of Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons arsenal -- most of which had been destroyed following the Gulf War.
In August 2004, American troops were able to buy containers from locals of what they thought was liquid sulfur mustard, a blister agent, the documents revealed. The chemicals were triple-sealed and taken to a secure site.
Also in 2004, troops discovered a chemical lab in a house in Fallujah during a battle with insurgents. A chemical cache was also found in the city.

Actually, strike that first sentence: Regardless of the facts, which have been apparent before, during and after the war and were never in dispute until it was politically expedient for them to be, liberals will continue their "Bush Lied ... screed. After all, lying is all they know how to do.

Actually, not even tax cuts -- merely a continuation of the current rates. And hold on to your hats everyone making $250,000 or less annually, your taxes are taking a huge jump and there's nothing congress can do about it. These leftist cowards are too late. Yes running back home in a futile attempt to save their sorry asses is more important than the financial well-being of their middle-class constituents. So beginning January 1st, your taxes ARE going up no matter what they decide to do. Yes, even yours busboy making $20,000 a year. In fact, here's what the Associated Press has to say about the average middle class family:

A typical family of four with a household income of $50,000 a year would have to pay $2,900 more in taxes in 2011, according to a new analysis by Deloitte Tax LLP, a tax consulting firm. The same family making $100,000 a year would see its taxes rise by $4,500.
Wealthier families face even bigger tax hikes. A family of four making $500,000 a year would pay $10,800 more in taxes. The same family making $1 million a year would get a tax increase of $53,200.
The estimates are based on total household income, including wages, capital gains and qualified dividends. The estimated tax bills take into account typical deductions at each income level. Democrats have been arguing for much of the past decade that tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003 under former President George W. Bush provided a windfall for the wealthy. Those tax cuts expire at the end of the year, setting the stage for a high-stakes debate just before congressional elections in November.

What was it that our Liar In Chief has said roughly a million times during the entire fraudulent 2008 election campaign and right through nearly two years of his miserable presidential term? If you make less than $200,000 (or was that $250,000 or $150,000) a year your taxes won't go up a penny? Great, The Fallen Messiah will swoop in to save the day! If cowardly congressman won't stop tax hikes, the great post-partisan president will, won't he? After all, he promised!And the financial well-being of tens of millions of middle class families is certainly more important than the "rights" of a relative handful of rogue military personnel who have an uncontrollable urge to stand up and publicly declare their affection for anal sex -- something Obama also promised to defend.

It is to laugh. Protecting public declarations of an affinity for anal sex is something Obama actually cares about. Pretending to care about the cares and concerns of the average middle class peasant -- namely jobs and tax cuts -- is just something he HAD to do to get elected. Anybody who actually thinks he cares about tax cuts is probably gullible enough to vote for him for president again and recent polls show that this group is shrinking by the hour. In other words, the Left's Fallen (and Falling) Messiah cares more about anal sex than tax cuts. After all, you hear him out there nearly every day reinforcing his support of open sodomy in the military. But when have you ever heard him weigh in on preventing the looming tax hikes for the middle class? I guess a president has to have his priorities and we know where this president's priorities are.

When it comes to tax cuts actions speak louder than words. Do Obama's actions over the past couple of weeks indicate that he's fighting hard for tax cuts for the "middle class"? They don't and he won't. Because the president who developed his ideology at the knee of his mentor Frank Marshall Davis the communist, doesn't care that everyone is going to get their taxes raised. In fact, that's the way Mr. "everyone's best if we spread the wealth around" likes it. If he can't exclude "the rich" from tax cuts, he doesn't care to give anyone a tax cut. And according to the amount my taxes will be going up, I must be "rich".

But I'm not rich and anyone with a family income in the range the AP listed who has a couple of kids and a house in the 'burbs can tell you that it takes every penny of that money to provide your family a decent lifestyle. And now anywhere from $2,900 to $4,500 a year more of that money is going to feed the beast. What is the typically middle class family going to have to give up or cut back on to make this payment to fund the Obama/Reid/Pelosi largess? Well, $2,900 a year might be a modest car payment on a used car. Too bad for the used car salesman who could've had a sale. $2,900 a year might be the average amount a middle class family gives to their church. $2900 to $4500 is about the cost of a decent vacation for a family of four. This money, spent in any one of millions ways ripples it's way through the economy impacting numerous businesses, jobs and people. Now take $2,900 to $4,500 times tens of millions of households and consider the impact of taking that money out of the economy to feed that out of control beast called the federal government -- an entity that produces nothing and wastes hundreds of billions of dollars every year.

"Spreading the wealth around" is what it's all about, in the final analysis and screw the middle class if their lifestyle is reduced because this is the Marxist's way. Fifty-two (and change) percent of voters were so captivated by the media phenomenon that was Barack Obama during the 2008 campaign -- so captivated that they conveniently forgot (if it ever even registered) that this guy in his words and deeds is a Marxist who has demonstrated his contempt for our capitalist system and the individual prosperity it creates and continues to do so on a daily basis. So it should come as no surprise that Dear Leader Chairman Maobama (as Mike Church likes to call him) says nary a word about the fact that you and I are going to be getting hit with huge tax increases at the beginning of the year. He never cared about tax cuts, so blaming this in congress is a convenient way to deflect the blame. "Not raising taxes" was just another of the manifold lies the Liar in Chief told to get elected. Hope you weren't planning on buying a modest used car, making a minor home improvement or taking a family vacation next year, because Barack "Karl Marx" Obama is going to be doing a little "wealth spreading" with your cash next year. Isn't socialism great?
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The mortgage lender (usually a bank)? How does it help the bank to continue to have to hold a depreciating asset they don't even want longer than they would ordinarily have to? This action is going to keep more properties vacant and tied up in foreclosure proceedings even longer.

The "homeowner"? What homeowner? I can call myself a homeowner -- answer that question "do you own your own home or rent?" by saying I own my own home, I can pay outrageous taxes to the county every six months, anyone anywhere in the world can find my little slice of the American dream in my name on my county assessor's web page and know exactly how much it is worth. But the simple fact of the matter is that I'm not an actual homeowner until I hold a free and clear deed in my hand. Until then, I'm just a debtor to a bank that holds majority interest in the home I live in -- majority interest because if I miss any of those payments (including the last one) for a period of time, they can come in and reclaim their property and resell it to someone who is presumably more capable than I am of paying the monthly mortgage. That's the way it has always worked until the last couple of years or so when we've decided that it was necessary to turn this relationship on it's head and deprive the mortgage lender of their ability to recover their money from the deadbeat without be portrayed as a heel.

Did I say deadbeat? Yes, I did. We all acknowledge that there are a certain percentage of home buyers in foreclosure right now who are truly hard up. Thanks to the Obama Administration and its minions in both houses of congress, this percentage is a lot higher than it normally is. But the majority of Americans (and others -- legal aliens, illegal aliens etc.) who find themselves in mortgage trouble knew they couldn't afford the house they were buying in the first place and simply just weren't honest with themselves about their financial situation. Sure, there were banks out there offering "interest only" mortgages where you pay $250 a month on a $300,000 home then refinance after five years. But at some point the bill comes due and it's the responsibility of the borrower to realize that. It's not the evil lender who covered up the fact that you can't really buy a $300,000 house for $250 a month, it's the idiot who convinced himself (or herself) that they could afford it when the $250 a month payment went up by 800% in five years. Liberals like to portray this person and folks who can't afford their house payment on top of the two car payments, the boat payment the RV payment and $50,000 worth of credit card debt as "victims". If these folks are victims of anything they are victims of their own stupidity and their utter inability to be honest with themselves about their financial situation.

But there are "flaws in the paperwork". So what. In this mortgage lender/deadbeat relationship there is only one thing that matters: Is the deadbeat several month's behind in payments and is there any possibility that they are going to be able to get their mortgage current in the foreseeable future. If the answers to these questions respectively are yes and no, then the best option for everyone is to foreclose on the house. This gets the "home owner" out from under a house they can't afford and allows the mortgage lender to attempt to recover their debt by reselling the house to someone who can actually afford it.

But the rest of us benefit from this benevolence, don't we? After all even though we are current on our house payments and have a reasonable expectation that we will be for the foreseeable future, there but for the grace of God go I. If we're ever in situation where we can't pay our mortgage, we'd want the lender work with us as well right? Truthfully and as painful as it might be, if I ever find myself unable to make my mortgage payment month after month I -- as is the case with anyone else who finds themselves in this situation -- would be a whole lot better off to try to unload the house and either downsize into something I can afford or go back to being a renter than to struggle on month after month trying to make a payment I have no realistic expectation of ever being able to make. Contrary to what everyone has apparently come to expect over the last 30 years or so, falling on hard times doesn't make you a "victim". However painful it may be, it's a part of the American experience. Living in the greatest country God gave man doesn't doesn't give you an automatic entitlement to onward and upward prosperity and it doesn't guarantee that nothing bad will ever happen to you. All you are guaranteed in this country is your freedom and liberty -- "victim" status and a death grip on a house you can't afford shouldn't be a part of the bargain. Unfortunately, entitlement seems to be becoming more and more a part of the American experience these days. And that's a bad thing.

Sunday, October 10, 2010

Jerry "Governor Moonbeam" Brown has lived 72 years, served two terms as governor of California,was mayor of Oakland for years, has been California Attorney General for three years now, and after all this, he apparently never learned how to hang up a phone. No wonder everything this guy touches turns to crap. Perhaps its all the alleged drug use. If Californians elect this guy governor, they deserve everything they get. Yes, it'll be time to cut the state loose and let it float over to China.

But let's hope the fine citizens of the state of California have more sense than this. Meg Whitman is no conservative, but she knows how to run a company and California needs someone who's been responsible for the bottom line of a private company and been successful at it to turn their financial mess around. Chris Christy she ain't, but she's a hell of a lot better than their alternative.

Which brings us back to Governor Moonbeam, the guy who is chiefly responsible for the mess California is in today having set the stage for it better than 30 years ago. Because this idiot doesn't know how to use a phone, Whitman has a gift in the form of the Brown camp calling her a "whore" that should help take the focus off the trumped up illegal housekeeper scandal thrown at her by rabid commie lib Gloria Allred. Unlike this apparent set-up of Meg Whitman and Allred's sacrificing an illegal alien on the altar of the prospect of another gubernatorial term for her buddy Jerry, the Brown camp can't even remotely connect Whitman's campaign to "whoregate". Unless, of course, Governor Moonbeam is going to claim that Meg's campaign forced him to forget how to hang up the phone, then compounded the problem by forcing his aid to call Whitman a whore.

If Brown can call lie about Whitman and call her a whore I can tell the truth about Brown and call him a dumbass. Let's all hope this scandal torpedoes dumbass Jerry "Governor Moonbeam" Brown's campaign. As I said before, if they elect him governor, flush the whole state -- it's done. Read more!

Saturday, October 09, 2010

And will continue to until the whole thing is repealed. But the next shoe to drop is the waivers. In other words, we know everyone's pissed off about this so issue temporary waivers that expire a year before Obama's re-election bid so that the segment of the public that has the collective attention span of a flea will forget about this before November 2012. This is simple and exactly as us conservatives predicted: Obamacare (or Hillarycare -- remember they tried this back in 1993 and I still have the glossy bound 1300+ page plan to prove it -- or any other form of socialized medicine) is an unconstitutional intrusion on our liberties that will bankrupt the country and ruin the best health care system in the world. Obama knows this and only cares about it right now because it is a prime reason his party's chances of keeping their majority in the House (and maybe the Senate) are in the crapper. So he grants waivers of the inevitable -- the bankrupting of health insurers and major corporations as they struggle to cope with the mandates. All this serves to do is briefly postpone the total dependence and despair that is the goal of Obama's brand of Fabian Socialism. If he thought he could get by with it and the Democrats weren't staring one of the worst congressional defeats in better than 100 years square in the face there would be no waivers -- save the ones for the unions because they are his buddies.

And of course another thing us conservatives have been saying since before this jackass (in the interest of proper attribution, I have to credit Rush Limbaugh for popularizing this moniker for The Fallen Messiah) was elected president is that nothing that he and the super majority he has in both houses do will do anything to improve the economy. Obamacare, Obama cap and tax, Obama tax increases: They all add up to economic uncertainty that crushes entrepreneurship and creates an environment where businesses don't want to hire because they don't know what other Hugo Chavez-like mandate may come down from Hugo's protege that will tighten the "boot on their necks" to paraphrase an Obama Administration official. We won't have positive job growth unless and until we throw these bums out on their asses. Read more!

Friday, October 08, 2010

James Jones ain't a rat by any stretch of the imagination. He's an honorable Marine who served in Vietnam and put in 40 years in service to our country. One can only surmise that the reason why he stuck around the Obama Administration as long as he did was because of his great love of country and wanting to do everything he could for the folks who give it their all to defend our liberty ever day. But apparently, he's had enough. Jones is leaving his job as national security adviser leaving the job to a Democrat political hack who hates the military. Just the person to be advising the president of the United States on all matters of national security. But since The Former Messiah shares Tom Donilon's hatred for the military, they'll both be in good company. Too bad the rest of us that depend on a secure nation won't be.

Sunday, October 03, 2010

"If you like your health plan, you can keep it, the only thing that will change is that you’ll pay less.”

You'll recall this line, uttered by the Liberty Terrorist who is the president of the United States during a weekly radio address in July of 2009 and repeated hundreds of times by The Messiah himself and various administration flunkies over the course of this whole Obamacare debacle. Where is the leftist media now that Obamacare has predictably begun to unravel the best health care system in the world? Now that we have proof positive that all the assertions they made about health care availability, portability, ease of access and cost are proving to be lies?

What am I talking about? Well in general I'm talking about the dozens of stories we've heard over the past couple of weeks about how health insurers are gearing up to meet Obamacare mandates -- raising premiums in anticipation of increased costs, scaling down plans and in some cases, dropping plans all together.

Take the 1500 employees of the health care division of Principal Financial Group in Des Moines Iowa, for example. You see, Principal Financial Group is a minor player in the health insurance business and they've seen the writing on the wall. They realize that complying with the Obamacare mandates is going to bankrupt them so they are getting out of the health insurance business. And not only won't these 1500 employees be able to keep the health plan they like, they won't be able to keep the jobs they presumably like. At the end of the year, they are out of work. Principal has sold their health business to a bigger player -- United Health Care. Their business is health care and they really have no choice: If they are to stay in business they have to try to make it under the Obamacare mandates.

The loss of 1500 jobs as a direct result of Obamacare is tragic. These are just the first wave of tens of thousands more. But what of the tens of thousands of people covered by a Principal health care plan? My family is included in this group. We're happy with our health insurance plan, but we're not going to be able to keep it. And our premiums sure as hell aren't going down (name me one person who HAS seen their premiums go down). In fact, my family and thousands of others don't know exactly what our health insurance will look like after the first of the year.

There are obvious economies of scale when your company owns its own health care plan. Those are going away at the first of the year when Principal goes out of the health care business. United Health Care has some great plans. Years ago I administered one for my employer. But you can bet that any plan Principal Financial Group has to buy for its employees is going to cost it more than one it owns as a self-funded plan. So tens of thousands -- perhaps hundreds of thousands -- of Principal employees, their dependents and other Americans covered by Principal health plans sit and wait to find out what their health insurance will look like at the beginning of the year. So much for "If you like your health plan, you can keep it, the only thing that will change is that you’ll pay less.” But then, those of us who have been using our critical thinking skills already knew from well before they shoved this sham "universal health care" bill through in the dark of the night that like everything else that is liberalism, it was a blatant lie.

And in fact, this is the ultimate goal of Obamacare. All of the predictions us conservatives have made about Obamacare have been proven true thusfar:

1. Obama said you'd be able to keep your health insurance if you like it. That's been proven a lie.Tell the folks covered by Principal Midland's Choice and other Principal plans that "you'll be able to keep it".
2. Obama said your health insurance will cost you less. That's been proven a lie. Health care costs are actually going up. Just ask the Congressional Budget Office.
3. Obama said people won't lose coverage due to this unconstitutional government mandate. That's a lie.
4. Obama said Obamacare will increase access to health care. That's a lie.

Here's another thing that will be proven true over the next few years if we're not able to reverse all or some of Obamacare: By 2014, as is the goal of the legislation, most health insurers will be out of business. Their plans will be replaced by something of a government/business hybrid through the last health insurer standing which will probably be some form of a huge Blue Cross conglomerate in partnership with Big Brother. At that point, we'll have the nightmare us conservatives have warned you about -- the same crappy health care Great Britain has only worse. We hate to say we told you so but ....

Saturday, October 02, 2010

The Fallen Messiah came to a "middle class" home in Iowa the other day. As has been increasingly the case in this campaign season, he's finding that the "hope and change" message of two years ago doesn't play in Peoria very well any more considering the change is exactly the opposite of what the Former Messiah promised. If it don't play in Peoria anymore, it sure as hell don't play in Des Moines. Des Moines is where David Greenspon has owned and run a small business for the last thirty years. He's worked his ass off to make a good living for himself and provide employment for dozens of people. And he had a few words for the Exalted Ex-Messiah -- a guy who wouldn't know how to create a job if it walked up and bit him on the ass:

What was Obama's response to hearing what actually creates jobs from a man who has spent the past thirty years busting his ass every day to create them? If you watched the above video, you know: He didn't want to hear it. He flat cut David Greenspon, owner of Competitive Edge in Des Moines, Iowa, employer of 100 people, off. This pompous jackass who hasn't created a job in his entire life -- the man who has devoted the majority of his 49 years to whining and complaining about people who DO create jobs -- is so committed to his rigid leftist tax and spend ideology that advice from a real person who has actually created jobs just doesn't register with him. It does not compute.

If you listen to Greenspon's story, as he told it in numerous interviews after his close encounter with the Chicago Marxist who unfortunately occupies the White House, it's not a whole lot different than the millions of other small businesspeople who create 80% of the jobs in this country. He started his business nearly 30 years ago when he was in his mid-20s. It was probably just him and a couple of other people at first. Eventually it grew to employ 100 people -- 100 people who are able to provide a home for their families and put food on the table because back in his mid-20s Greenspon put everything on the line for his dream.

As Greenspon pointed out to The Anointed One, just because a small business person may carry $1 million in inventory, several hundred thousand in accounts receivables and posses several million in property and equipment does not mean that person is a "millionaire". As Greenspon pointed out, he doesn't take money out of his business. He has paid himself the same salary for 10 years and plows the profits back in to the business to grow it. Yet, he is one of the people that The Anointed One and the Vice Buffoon say they "can't afford" to give $100,000 (in Greenspon's case, probably less) to. Never mind the fact that they aren't giving Greenspon or any other small business person anything and these folks aren't asking for anything. All they want is to be able to keep THEIR money -- money they rightfully earned -- so they can keep growing their businesses, employing more people, growing the economy and reducing unemployment.

Capitalism, what a concept. A concept that is completely lost on the Marxist, Socialists and assorted Communists now in charge of the executive branch and both houses of congress.